


A Touch of Heaven

by Prix



Category: Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms, Fate/stay night (Visual Novel), Fate/stay night - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Route: Heaven's Feel, Route: Unlimited Blade Works, Sakura/Shinji isn't endgame, Sexual Coercion, it is non/dubcon but isn't violent it is more in line with coercion
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-12
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-10-08 15:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17389223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prix/pseuds/Prix
Summary: An ensemble cast, alternative Sakura narrative.





	1. Incubus Complex

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This fic starts out with some pretty rough stuff, but it isn't the kind of thing that is (probably) going to give you nightmares. It is the first even kind of non-con thing I've written, so I have been trying to make sure that I tread lightly in terms of tagging it. I have just made explicit what is discussed or implied with Heaven's Feel. I just read HF on the lparchive, and I have seen the UBW anime and a bunch of other stuff. This fic will draw from both HF and UBW concepts as well as things I have decided to add. 
> 
> If any of you are here because you like(d) my fic [**Empty Gold**](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6180148/chapters/14159629), I appreciate your presence and patience. I have been in the process of getting back to a place where I feel competent working with Fate in general, and I wanted a fresh narrative, but I also hope to continue that. It isn't abandoned so much as I'm kind of trying to work out an effective, sustainable way forward.

There was a time when her silence was sadness, when it was grief. Back then, she still held onto hope that perhaps one day something, someone, would save her. She gave up on her father and then her mother in quick succession, but she knew she still had an older sister, and there must have been some reason she was kept inside the Tohsaka household when Sakura was not. Her older sister must have been stronger than her, better, and so for a long time she imagined that perhaps one day her older sister would come to the door, take her by the hand, and whisk her away into the night. Only, it was not to be. Her uncle, lost and broken Kariya, had given her hope for a little while, too, but he had become a husk of a man, and he was devoured by the worms that wouldn’t, couldn’t devour her.   
  
She had given up after that. She had learned that grief did no good and that hope was a poison that ate into her more deeply than the worms ever did. Only, a sliver of light remained in the dreary, damp old mansion. Her new big brother was smart, too. He carried himself with confidence and a knowledge of privilege that Sakura had never learned nor hoped to possess, but it made him hard to look away from. At first, he had pushed her away, hated her intrusion and her presence, but she had tried to apologize for it. She hadn’t wanted to become a part of his family, to forget her blood and her name and the softness of her mother’s voice. She hoped, dangerously, that enough submission, surrender, and closeness would one day show him that she had not meant to inconvenience him.   
  
And it worked.   
  
One day, Matou Shinji saw Sakura. There was a certain hooded expression to his eyes that made her feel cold to her center, but she was used to how cold it was down in the basement. This was nothing to that. She could bear the cool condescension in his gaze, because it was only fair, because she deserved it for taking his place. She could bear it because he smiled at her, too, and that wasn’t fake. From that day on, he did not always ignore her. He allowed her to help him with things. He acknowledged her as his sister to the girls who followed him around without ever quite looking at his face and the boys who excelled against him in sports. On rare occasions, they would find a spot in the Matou mansion that wasn’t quite so dreary as the others, and he would show her something.   
  
Once, they sat in a wide, defiant beam of light that found its way through a crack in the heavy, dusty drapes. There, cross-legged on the floor, they leaned toward each other, and in the center there was a large, ancient manuscript that strained even Shinji’s older, bigger hands to hold. He had committed much of the Matou magecraft and history to memory. He spoke about it in hushed tones, like a ghost story he didn’t expect her to believe but which he took great pride in. She wondered why he shared with her something he could never do and which she knew in her deepest nerves by then, but she didn’t question it. She just listened to him speak with her and watched his sly, smooth gestures with restrained amusement that made her forget that she pitied him for a while. Even if he would never be a magus, he was smart. He would survive this place.   
  
Another time, in the hot and sticky days of midsummer, they escaped together to the patch of grass that – despite its closeness to the centuries-old Matou workshop – sprouted some effort at color and life due to the weather. It ran along the bricked path that some might have called a driveway, though there was no car at the Matou residence to have need of it. Sakura watched as her brother – as he was her brother – set himself to the purpose of galavanting across this small swath of life, backward and forward again, with the purpose of capturing some of the luminescent insects that swarmed around and found each other in the twilight. Sakura knew, whether her big brother did or not, that their purpose in lighting up at varying intervals was not to light the interior of the jar he captured them in, even going to the trouble of preparing the jar with jabbed-in holes to allow them air as if that might have been all they needed to survive indefinitely. Sakura knew that they were signaling to each other, reaching out with carnal lust and carnal kindness. They wanted to make new life before their own brief lives faded away, never knowing that they were hopelessly outmatched by the decay that spread just beyond and beneath them.   
  
She had watched him for a while and noted that he was smiling. She liked it when he smiled, and to him they were only fireflies. Only, she could not bear to watch them having their lives threatened, cut short, and drowned out through being sealed up inside her brother’s gentle prison. Moved by her desire to avoid being taught this particular pastime and her habit to join in the motions of play going on around her, she rose to her feet. She turned to one of the trees that grew up out of the green grass and placed her hand to its trunk. It seemed to know this place better than the grass or the fireflies. It looked as if it believed autumn had never ended.   
  
Compassion for it welled up in her. It was another emotion that she had not quite lost touch with, though it seemed to filter through a screen. She put both hands to the trunk of the tree. She wondered if just touching it would send its soul into endless winter, but she had seen other children climbing trees in parks she had never stopped to play in.   
  
She tried it, a rare impulse and curiosity. She did not give consideration to the why of it. She only fully recognized what she was doing when her efforts failed and she slid back down the main trunk of the tree, holding on with meer friction burns to her hands but a long scrape along her shin. She was used to pain by that point, to agony, but the surprise of it makes her cry out softly. It caught her brother’s attention. He took the time to screw the lid back onto his jar of captured, doomed bugs, but he came over to her and she felt his hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. She caught her breath and looked up at him, her gaze wide but clear.   
  
“I’m fine,” she told him, because he seemed concerned. There were dozens of little holes in her bare skin. They wept blood a little, but the blood was restrained, like tears brimming in the eyes of a person too stubborn to let them fall. She got up to prove that she was fine. She even held onto the side of his shirt somewhere about his ribs to steady herself. He showed her his firefly collection proudly, his arm slinging around her shoulders to hold her close and her attention captive. She didn’t really want to see them because despite the beauty of their constant flashing, all she could wonder was whether or not some of them might mate in their fruitless cage, keeping their bloodline going with no hope of survival. She looked up at her brother’s face instead, feeling terribly for him – that he could not see why it was sad.   
  
He just barely noticed that she was looking at him and scowled. In a smooth movement, he pushed her away but only by a few inches, disentangling his arm from her shoulders.   
  
“Don’t look at me like that,” he admonished her. It was something he said often. She looked down, trying not to look at him like anything. She could feel his eyes still on her. She blinked her own and stared at the damp, strangely lush grass. It needed to be cut if it didn’t die first. She scuffed a worn, pink sneaker into it. “Can you run, Sakura?” came a question she didn’t expect.   
  
Her heart stuttered in her chest. His tone was so cool and strange that she was afraid she had made him hate her again. She lifted her eyes to see, to apologize, but the devilish smile she saw on his face was not one of true evil. It broke into a brighter grin, and he lunged for her, fingers grasping at the shirt she wore. Again, mostly out of surprise, Sakura ducked back and made her abdomen small with a deep tension of her tiny muscles.   
  
“I said run!” he encouraged through laughter, and she did. She did with all her might, because not obeying an order was like saying she did not want to live here anymore, and she did not have anywhere else to go. She ran from him, but she could not keep it up for long. There was only so much grass, so she ran for the paving stones, but he caught her by her arm and whirled her back toward him.   
  
“I’m sorry!” she squeaked at him as she ran into him bodily with the force of his pulling back at her.   
  
“Don’t be,” he sneered at her. He let her go. He took a few steps backward, and she thought his posture was strange. It was as if his shoulders went further back than his sense of balance should have allowed. Then, he rounded on the ball of his foot, back into the relative softness of the grass. “You’re it!” he declared, a challenge that he dared her to defy.   
  
She scuffed her shoes again, this time on the stones beneath them.   
  
“Chase me!” he ordered and explained at once. Sakura frowned at the request – the command – but she did her best after a couple of seconds of tracking Shinji’s holding pattern of making an arc back and forth of equidistance from her until she caught on. She started up after him, small and breathless and determined, and he feinted in the opposite direction in response to her bodily dive toward him.   
  
She crashed down onto her stomach and slid a bit along the grass. It didn’t hurt her except knocking the wind from her lungs. Her hands instinctively went up beside her shoulders, pushing to get up again, but she stayed low, looking guiltily toward Shinji. She hadn’t done as she was told – at least not very well.   
  
“Come on. You haven’t lost. Yet,” Shinji explained. He watched her and she got up. Then, staying more than an arm’s length from her as they circled a bit like two predators trying to decide which was prey, he explained the concept of a “base” to her, and she nodded with understanding. Then he set out for it. The first few times, he beat her there, but sooner or later, she learned to catch him from time to time. Each time she did, he made sure to catch her more roughly than the last time he was “it,” but it was a game that brought with it such breathless exhilaration, such a rush of stimulant adrenaline, that Sakura’s breath felt almost like laughter. Almost. And some days of her childhood – not most, but some – were like that: a few drops of blood and a few fireflies.   
  
Then one day, the drapes were slid back into place. The house was darkened, never to know sunlight again. It was as if, finally, the worms that were part of her training had taken their fill of her and moved on to her brother without his flesh bearing a mark. From the moment he knew of their existence, part of her thought that it must be happening to him, too. Only she knew better. If they touched him even once, his flesh would be no more. Something ate into his heart, though, and that something was devoured, digested, and never came through his eyes toward her again.   
  
It happened all at once, but slowly, slowly, she began to see what it would mean. She thought she had given up dread and regret and hope long ago, but no matter how many times she told him: “I’m sorry, big brother. I’m _sorry_ , big brother. I’m sorry, **big brother** ,” it never made a difference. His heart was hardened to her forever, and it broke another piece of her she had hoped couldn’t break anymore. She stopped meeting his eyes again, and it was as if what they once were had never happened. He was still ‘big brother,’ to her, but he left her alone. Alone – all the time – until finally, finally there was a crack in that wall of ice he had erected between them.   
  
It was hot, violent, and terrifying. And she only fought back once.   
  
The first time he came into her room after leaving her alone, ignoring her, and deriding her all over again, he had reached out for her with gritted teeth and held breath. Then it was sound, breath, rage, and a tearing at her clothes and skin that she hadn’t seen coming. She didn’t know why she hadn’t. She should have.   
  
She wondered, afterward, how long he had known how to use _that_ to hurt her.   
  
She wondered if he had ever thought about it before.   
  
She had known what was possible for a long, long time, though she’d never felt anything _human_ touching her, taking her, raping her.   
  
The following day, she was able to take a bath alone. He did not come to see what he had already seen, and their grandfather was nowhere to be found. She wondered if he knew. She didn’t want him to know. She knew he would laugh, and she couldn’t bear the shame of that. It would be worse than what she had caused her brother to sink into in his anger and shame. She did not know how to make it better or if she ever could, but she cried alone for a little while that morning. The warmth of the water on her face was the only comfort she could expect for her tears, easing the swelling so he would not know and make it or the bruises and scratches on her body worse.   
  
The subsequent change didn’t happen all at once. He didn’t come back the following night or even every night when he did. Life carried on as it always had, except there were no more moments in the sunlight when she returned home from school or from Emiya’s house. Shinji was rough with her, careless in a way that he had not been before, but he still claimed her as his sister in front of others. At least she still had that. As long as she did, she could probably continue to bear his claiming her in other ways. She had done her best to learn to go numb, to stop screaming or crying or even reacting because it had never done her any good.   
  
She certainly didn’t fight him anymore, and she tried to become as inanimate as she could. She tried to imagine that she was a doll, distant and empty and rigid. Only, it never lasted. She couldn’t let it, because Shinji was – no matter _what_ he was – not like the worms.   
  
He was her brother. Before that, he was human. He was alive, and he was a boy who had believed in something about himself, about his worth, about his future, before it had all been stamped out. Sooner or later, she stopped simply staring up at the ceiling or down into her pillow. She saw _him_ , because they were both terrible, both broken, and completely the same.   
  
It didn’t take long at all for her to lose her ability to pretend not to feel it. Every single moment of training made her reaction worse. Made it _easier_ in the worst way she could imagine. Soon, sometimes, her hand would find its way up to his arm. She gripped him there, not to push him away but to hold on, for some anchor to humanity as sensation, arousal, and disgust mingled in her body like fuel running into an engine, making her react like a machine meant only for this.   
  
She never went to him. It was her only reliable source of dignity that remained within the walls of the Matou mansion. When she did come home after staying as late at Emiya’s as she could possibly allow each day, she moved as silently as she could through the house. If she met Shinji or her grandfather there – in the kitchen, in the hall – she would greet them, polite and soft. Sometimes, they spat derision. Sometimes, they gave her orders. Worse still, they were occasionally mindlessly civil. But they never said it. Neither of them ever gave any indication of knowing what had changed so irreparably between the two who had never been meant to be brother and sister but who had found a way through such a dark cavern together.   
  
No, he only came to her when he felt like it, letting himself into her room. She had learned to anticipate him, in a way. She couldn’t count on a schedule, but she could feel it in the air, in the way he looked at her – even at school. She knew that look in his eyes, and she was worse for not hating it as much as she should have. She hated it, but at least it meant he wanted her there for something. At least it meant he remembered her at all. Instead, what she hated were the girls who swarmed around him, for his attention, his sweet words, and the promise of money that his great mansion held.   
  
It made Sakura nauseated that she would think such a thing, sometimes violently enough to make her run into the bathroom. It was the only place she could look into her own eyes, knowing what only the two of them did. Even if he went on dates with a girl, two, or all of them, it was _her_ bed he would come to. She wondered if he had ever done it with anyone else. It would make her dig her fingernails into her own skin, but she would always stop just before it broke. 

 

⧞⧞⧞

  
On a cold day in early January, she returns home in the twilight and slips through the dark house as the light outside fades. The house seems empty, and the oppressive air within it seems bearable for a given evening. Sakura takes off her shoes at the door, but she quickly nudges them into a nearby closet, masking her presence as much as she can hope to. She does not announce that she is home, but she carries her bag with her up to her bedroom.   
  
She is allowed to use it more than when she was small, sleeping rather than losing her senses in the pit underground.   
  
She changes out of her school uniform into some clothes that are more comfortable. She wears dark cloth shorts and a t-shirt. There is no point keeping up appearances here, and at least her skin can breathe. Despite it being cold outside, her own skin runs hot most of the time. She hangs up her school uniform for the following day.   
  
She stands on the carpeted floor and wriggles her toes. She looks around, almost anxious and very nearly feeling free. Sometimes, for a moment, when she returns from a day at school and an afternoon at Emiya’s house, she can almost imagine that she is a normal girl and that this is a normal room. She sits down on the edge of her bed and cracks open her school bag. From within it, she pulls out her homework and hears the sharp crinkle of a thick, plastic bag. Fishing back down into her satchel, she draws out a bag of crisps given to her by someone at school – probably Mitsuzuri, though she struggles to summon the memory. She holds it in her hand, feeling the tension of the air caught inside that has protected the crisps from being utterly crushed all this time. She frowns with bemusement at them. She knows that Emiya would likely disapprove of such a false, processed snack.   
  
She gets to her feet and travels down the stairs to get a glass of water from the kitchen. When she returns, she pries open the bag of crisps, and she starts to eat them, slowly suckling all the savory salt from them before she lightly chews and swallows what remains. She does so without much thought, methodical but attentive as she concentrates, mostly, on her homework.   
  
She is nearly finished when something disrupts the steady calm she has settled into. The bag of crisps were finished a long time ago, but she glances at them furtively the moment her brother calls her name with neither respect nor hostility, filled to the brim with something that is rather like drunkenness instead even though she knows he hasn’t had a drop to drink. He lets himself into her room, like he always does, and she is already gathering her homework and quickly organizing it into finished and into what she will need to complete when she escapes to Emiya’s house in the morning – anticipating, like always.   
  
When she has quickly put her things back into her school bag and slid it safely between her bed and an underused chair, she finally looks up at Shinji’s face. He smiles at her, but there is little warmth and cruel amusement. Her own eyes narrow, slightly, but it is more as if she is squinting at a harsh, unnatural light than that she is glaring at him. She has lost the will to do that very often.   
  
“Well,” he says. He leans for the bed, and she thinks that it is already too late. Instead, he snatches the finished crisp bag and makes a show of inspecting the inside of it, noting how cleanly it has been cleared out. “I’m not sure Emiya would approve,” he says – mocking her.   
  
“Never mind it,” she says quickly. Too quickly. He crushes the bag in his hand and drops it to the floor with an unmistakable glower of his own.   
  
Sakura doesn’t look up at him. Instead, she swallows and takes a deep breath of air. Her hands go down to the hem of her shirt. She closes her eyes and starts to pull it up over her head.   
  
He laughs. Deep and guttural. Only, it fades into a contemplative hum. She feels him stand back further to the center of the room, away from her. She doesn’t know _how_ she feels his presence even when he steps away, only that she does. She drops her shirt toward the foot of the bed on top of the mint green bedclothes. She looks at it, white and pink printed and still intact.   
  
“You want me,” he says in a low, almost gentle hum. It gives her goosebumps; it turns her stomach. She glances over but not up to the level of his eyes. He is draping the top of his school uniform over the wooden chair that belongs with her rarely-used desk.   
  
Sakura swallows again, but her throat feels dry. There is a knot in the pit of her stomach. It’s sickness, yes, but not just the kind of sickness she should be feeling. She looks to the door. It isn’t even fully closed. She can’t bring herself to care. The knot in her stomach unfurls a little to allow her to breathe. Blood rushes to the surface of her skin, making her more sensitive and receptive to touch. She hangs her head, hair falling in her face.   
  
Shinji steps out of his pants and takes the time to fold them over with his top. He stands there in dark, tight boxer-briefs that almost resemble her own shorts. He comes closer. She braces herself, teeth touching together and jaw slacking with conscious effort. She waits for him to slap her, to hit her because she hasn’t come up with the right words to say. Instead, he grabs her by the chin and makes her look up at him. She blinks against the messy drape of her own hair tangling with her eyelashes and meets his eyes from so far below him.   
  
“You want me,” he repeats, grinning with smug satisfaction. He glances down pointedly to her breasts cradled within her bra. He looks back at her face and one of his eyebrows goes low than the other. “But you’re not the only one,” he taunts her.   
  
He knows what he is doing. She doesn’t know how, but he does. The worst part of it is the envy. She wants him to want _her_. She wants him to come to her, to use _her_ if he must use anyone. He is her brother. And she needs him.   
  
She can’t come up with the words for that. She reaches down and hooks her thumbs into her shorts and panties at once, making quick work of tugging them up to her knees and then down past her ankles. She throws them away, quickly. It doesn’t make a difference if she tries to hide that she is already a little wet.   
  
She draws her knees toward her chest anyway, realizing that her bra is still on. She hugs her knees to her chest and shivers, though her body is still running too hot. She presses and rubs her lips together as she looks to Shinji, standing there in his underwear. Her eyes flit down, and she sees his erection straining against the dark fabric. The sickness in her belly stirs at the sight of it and the thoughts and the associations that chase after it. She digs her nails into her own skin.   
  
He laughs at her as if he pities her again. She misses that laugh. Maybe that’s what’s so wrong with her.   
  
“Do you think you could _help_ me?” he asks. He is mocking her, but she quickly looks up at him anyway. She knows it must be a trick, but somehow, without asking for clarification, she understands. She lets go of her knees, straightens her legs, and swings them over the side of the bed. She sits there, naked except for her breasts, and straightens her posture as if she might find any sort of decency that way. She reaches out, fingertips hooking the waistband of his underwear and tugging it down his hips.   
  
She hears him sigh when his erection springs free. She is glad it isn’t painfully big. Sometimes, she wishes it were bigger. She tugs his underwear down his thighs until, past his knees, they fall free. He steps out of them. She looks back up along his body. He is lean, lightly muscled, and she knows that he is handsome enough. She also knows that none of that matters. Her brother isn’t supposed to want this, but she knows that she is in no position to resist. She rubs her lips together again as her eyes dart back down to his erection. She wonders if he wants her to. She won’t make the first move unless he says so.   
  
He notices the look on her face and laughs at her.   
  
“Maybe some other time, bitch,” he says. He reaches for her throat and grasps it just beneath her chin. It doesn’t cut off her breathing, but he guides her back until she is realigning herself into the proper position on the bed. She gets wetter by the second, and it’s a good thing. This way, she won’t bleed.   
  
When she is in position, he comes down over her. It is a practiced movement, and she watches him with relative disinterest. He lets go of her neck and it feels almost clinical. No. It would never be clinical. Instead, it feels almost _normal_.   
  
She wonders what it is like for _normal_ people who have sex with someone who isn’t their brother, someone they _want_ , someone they _love_. Even someone they just met. She thinks she probably won’t ever know.   
  
He pries her thighs apart to his liking, gripping tightly enough to leave whiter marks on her pale skin. She relaxes, leaving them where he places them. In that regard, she still does feel like a doll.   
  
It doesn’t hurt when he presses inside her. She doesn’t think it ever would have; her body was already too broken from the start. She sighs softly, but it is neither satisfaction nor pain at first. She closes her eyes anyway.   
  
He is altogether more entertained for a little while at least. He braces his feet against the wall that is at the foot of her built-in bed. He finds a rhythm, entirely wrapped up in himself. She feels it as the rhythm gets steadier. Harder. His pelvic bone grinds into her, over her, and even though he doesn’t care at all about whether or not he grinds against her, sometimes he does.   
  
Sooner or later, she can’t help it. She sighs again, but this time it is with interest – even relief. Her voice catches in her throat, pressed out of her to his rhythm. She looks up and watches him. It makes it even worse. When his eyes meet hers, his hand comes down to her throat again, just to prove he can, but after a slightly uncomfortable press from his thumb, she lifts her own hips and squeezes her own muscles. She has learned how to protect herself. His eyes flutter closed and he groans – for her. He drops his hand away from her throat and it tangles in her hair instead.   
  
She is easy. She knows she shouldn’t be. She knows that other women, other girls, have a harder time with it. She hears them talking, sometimes, in discreet tones when no one else can or ever should hear. She knows that she shouldn’t be able to come on a man’s dick without even touching her clit. She knows that she shouldn’t succumb before he does when he doesn’t even try to help her. But the moment she responds in kind, even if it is to keep breathing, it is too late. She knows what will happen. Suddenly, she is no longer a doll. It is mutual. He touches her, and she grasps back, squeezes back, writhes back. She never says an articulate word, but their moans and sighs are communication enough. They have learned each other, and without any special effort on his part, she orgasms. It drives him crazy. He fucks her harder, defiant and driven mad that she gets something he doesn’t get, until finally he spills his semen deep inside her. It is warm and stirs her again. But she doesn’t ask for a thing – not ever.   
  
He rolls off of her. They are both slick with sweat. It even smells the same. Even though she was not born into his bloodline, every cell of her body has been changed to be more like his. And still he wants her like this. A bitter taste in the back of her throat comes when she wonders if that’s why he wants her at all.   
  
He catches his breath raggedly at her side. For a moment, if they weren’t naked and dirty, she would think that it might be almost like what _normal_ siblings would do. But she has never known normal. Not once, not for a second.   
  
He stills beside her. She glances over at him with a kind of nonsensical, habitual concern. She wonders if he will look her in the eye, but more than that she wonders if he has fallen asleep. She knows that it drains men to do this, even under normal circumstances. She wonders if he will ever _sleep with her_. He never has. She wonders if she wants him to.   
  
At first, his eyes are closed, but he quickly opens them. There is a glint in them that shows her that he has chased away his desire to sleep. She wonders if he can see what she wonders in her eyes. She has heard at least a myth that _doing this_ sometimes draws people closer, but real intimacy is something that she has no knowledge of. She wouldn’t even know what it looked like.   
  
He gets up on his elbow and looks her up and down. She is still lying on her back. She draws her hands together over her chest and twiddles her fingers together, taking interest in them instead. He snorts, not quite making it to another biting laugh.   
  
“You’re _still_ fucking horny, aren’t you?” he asks her, knowing and low.   
  
Her eyes widen at the question and she keeps twiddling her fingers, but it is a bit rougher and a little awkward now, as if she has lost motor control of part of her body. She doesn’t say anything to him as if it is a ridiculous question. She hopes that is how he will take it.   
  
She thinks he has let it go as just another way to mock the state of her body, knowing what she really is. He gets up and climbs over her legs, and she thinks he is about to gather his clothes and leave. Maybe he thinks so, too, but the moment he picks up his underwear from the rug by her bed, he rolls them up in his hand. He knees back down onto the foot of her bed and drops them there. She swallows hard and looks at him. She draws her legs a little closer together and starts to bend her knees. She wonders how he could _possibly_ want to do it again so soon. She also knows that she cannot say no. Her body does not want her to, either.   
  
“Well, I _guess_ since you were a good girl and didn’t make me wait this time, I could help you out…” he says, magnanimous in a way that she can feel weighing down on her soul. She knows how it is possible for people to hate him when he talks like that, even if she never quite can. He slides his hands beneath her, palms up, and lifts her hips up toward him. In the same movement, he leans down onto his elbows, and she realizes what he is about to do. “I saw you looking…” he taunts. “Maybe someday I’ll _let you_ ,” he says, as if it is a great privilege, “but in the meantime at least you can be _practice_ for when I have a somebody worth bringing to my bed.”   
  
He leans in then. The first lick isn’t very confident, and she knows that she is still leaking _his semen_. She wonders if he remembers that at all. She wriggles her hips as if to get away, but he refuses to let that happen without a word. He gains confidence as he goes. He has been doing this to her for so long that he has gained some confidence, too. This is the first time his mouth has been latched between her legs, but she feels him lick and suckle, and every time she reacts in any way – twitching, moaning, gasping, gripping desperately at her own breasts – she feels the vibration of his laughter.   
  
Her body is not her own, and she has known that for a long time. She loses touch with what _she_ even is beyond her body when this happens. But somehow, this is the worst thing he has ever done to her.   
  
They never kiss. Never. Not once. She has seen boys and girls sneaking kisses on the school grounds. She has seen kisses on television. She knows that it goes with this kind of thing, only for them it doesn’t. She knows that a kiss would be something too close to saying she mattered or was worthy at all. His words bore holes into her brain. Tears come to her eyes while she gets closer and closer to one of the strongest, worst orgasms she has ever felt. His tongue is soft. His lips are soft. He barely even has any stubble. She squirms. He holds her tighter. She _hears_ it. He has never kissed her lips. He has never kissed her neck. Even his mouth on her chest has always been too lewd, too sloppy, too filled with tongue to be called a kiss at all. But this feels like a kiss that could sever what is left of her mind from her body.   
  
She cannot help the sounds she is making or how loud they are. She knows that she is begging, but she cannot hear her own words or if they are words at all. There are tears in her eyes.   
  
_Practice_.   
  
He always comes to _her bed_. He never takes her _into his_.   
  
_Practice._  
  
But he will not let her go. He isn’t _practice_ for her. He is all she will ever have, and she wants… this…   
  
_This._  
  
Her body finally cracks away from her fraying thread of sanity and she trembles and her insides convulse, and when he drops her down to the bed she cannot move anything but her eyes. When she looks at his face, his mouth and the skin around it glisten as if he has rubbed clear lip-gloss all over his face. It would be funny if she remembered how to laugh. If she remembered how to feel anything.   
  
She lies there and watches him slip his underwear back on. He wipes his mouth roughly with the whole length of his forearm. He pulls his pants on without fastening them. He carries his shirt draped over his arm. He heads off to his room, a place he has told her she will never matter enough to enter.   
  
She lies there, trying to recover her strength from the deep, muscular ache between her legs, running down her thighs and up into her abdomen. Her gaze finds the ceiling as her hands fall down against her belly. She glances at the empty, open frame of the door. He hadn’t even closed it behind him. She thinks she should close it in a bit, but what does it matter?   
  
If he would stay with her, fall asleep, just once, she might think that it is something like the inverse of a photograph. That it is _making love_ even if it is all wrong. She loves him. She knows she does. She knows she longs for him to want her – to care. She blinks again as her eyes burn, but she feels like there probably aren’t anymore tears. It would be easier if she could believe that, if one day the next Matou heir is in her belly and it is all his doing. She thinks that would make him happy, but he could never see her as anything but a worn, filthy rag – never anything else. No, it will never _make_ anything between them. She knows better. He fucks her because he hates her. 


	2. Through the Looking Glass

For a long time now, Sakura has been able to find some normalcy, even if it is make-believe. Shirou’s house is open, and the silence that flows through it isn’t deafening or cruel. He does not live in a cage. She knows that she has neither right nor claim to such a place, but she has held onto it even more fiercely, knowing that.

Then the day comes when she knows she has to let it go, for now. If she can survive, if she can somehow win, then she hopes that she might be able to return to spending hours at his house. Those hours are the only light left in the darkness, but a magus’s place is in the dark. Shirou may have the capacity for a little magecraft, if one could call it that, but he will never know what it is like to belong to night and shadow and death. She likes that about him.

When she gathers her courage to tell him, she lets it out all at once, hoping that she doesn’t say anything too strange. He doesn’t know what she really is, but she lives in fear that he will one day find out. She cannot think about that as she apologizes for not being able to help him with dinner in the coming days, though. She simply has to tell him the truth. She doesn’t want to lie to him more than she already must, every time she sees him.

He accepts her apology so easily. He even tries to suggest that she ought to be doing something more fun with her time. She knows she ought to feel relief, but sour notes of anger and fear overwhelm it all. She doesn’t want him to think that she _has_ anyone else she would rather spend time with, that she has anything _better_ to do. She insists that she doesn’t intend to be lazy, promises that she will attend to her regular duties as much as possible, and finally that he can find her at the archery dojo in the mornings, should he need anything.

She hopes that he will listen, that it might even occur to him to come to her.

If nothing else, her urgency seems to move him. He tries to placate her, and she lets him. Then she sees it.

It is just a small, delicate pattern of bruises on the back of his left hand.

She hopes that’s all it is.

And yet, she knows better in the pit of her stomach. She is silenced from much further argument, no matter what he says now, because she sees it and _hopes_ that it isn’t true. She knows that it could be, though, and that if her life has shown her anything, it is that the worst outcome is something she has to accept.

She cannot accept this. Emiya Shirou is a Master. And there is nothing she can do about it.

 

⧞⧞⧞

  


When Sakura returns home this time, the familiar coil of fear in her stomach twists a bit differently. She walks up the bricked path, school bag in hand. If any of their neighbors were to see her walking to the door, fiddling with her key until it unlocks, disappearing inside, and gently closing the heavy, wooden thing behind her, she knows that it would all look the same as any other winter afternoon.

This time, however, what she fears is not what she might endure from Shinji. It isn’t her grandfather’s training, either. Instead, it is her own resolve to achieve the culmination of that training, at least for now. There is a war coming to Fuyuki, the same war that took the lives of Uncle Kariya and the man who used to be her father. She supposes there were more lives lost, though they would all be meaningless names to her. If she cannot succeed in this task set before her as heir of the Matou, the Makiri – _Zolgen_ – then she will die.

Even after everything she has been through, she does not think she wants to die.

Closing her eyes for a brief moment, she grips the handle of her school bag tighter. When she exhales, she opens her eyes and looks back, just once, at the faint outline of the nearest window, obscured by heavy drapes. When she walks away, she has the faint impression of orange and red sunlight in a lingering arc, lighting her way and obscuring her vision. She thinks about his hair and his smile. She ascends the stairs, puts her things away, and doesn’t bother changing out of her uniform.

She wants to get it over with. If she is to survive, she must push all thought of anything that may cause her regret or pause from her mind. She knows that she is not cut out for fighting back, but as the heir of the Matou, she has no choice but to try and strike first.

She does not go to the wretched underground mausoleum right away. Instead, she slips through the great mansion slowly. Even it seems almost pleasantly familiar compared to that place.

She goes into the kitchen, drinks a glass of water, and stands there for a moment, feeling her own presence as a human being. Magical energy flows through her, life force itself, but she does not use it for anything as she simply stands still and breathes. She knows that she is lined throughout her body, as if with explosives, with magic circuits that will change her into something else in a short time. She already knows what that is like, losing all sense of time, self, and sensation. She hates it, but it is what she lives for, in a way.

She glances over at a clock on the wall and tunes her ears to its soft, steady ticking. Judging by the hour, it is only barely twilight. She knows her grandfather will likely want her to wait until it is dark. When the mundane world is sleeping and the only safe living things are nature’s hunters, magi are at their peak. She knows that her grandfather will not allow her to waste herself on anything but her best for this, even if it has never once been required of her before.

There is no practicing for this, but everything has been practice for this. She thinks even her grandfather’s blind eye to her suffering at the hands of her brother has been practice for this. His toying with Kariya and allowing her to see him be consumed, in the end, was practice for this.

She wanders into the dark, long dining room. It has a table with chairs that should seat more people than she can recall ever being inside the house. While she is waiting for the interminable hours to pass, she wonders if they were ever fully occupied. She extends her hand and rubs along the form of one of the chairs. It is at the head of the table, but she only chooses it because it is closest to her. After a moment, she pulls the chair out and sits down, pulling her skirt neatly beneath her. She slides in a bit, sitting up with hands gently folded in front of her. She stares down the table’s length, reaching for some daydream in her mind that will not quite take shape.

She doesn’t know how much time has passed when she hears something familiar and she senses his presence, already close enough to reach out his wrinkled hand to touch her shoulder. A chill runs down her spine.

“There you are,” he says, as if he does not always, always know.

“Hello, Grandfather,” she says, meek and automatic as she lowers her gaze.

“You came home right away this evening,” he says.

Sakura swallows, the only outward sign of her racing thoughts. She wonders if he is trying to entrap her even more, to provoke a confession that will make this war only the beginning of her greater captivity – of being kept away from him. Her hands spread out and relax against the surface of the table. She notices the delicate bones’ movement in her own skin.

It reminds her of talk of elegance she’d heard once, such a long time ago.

“I knew you wanted me to… perform the ritual as soon as the Grail chose me,” she explains. Her eyes cast down toward the telltale bruising of the back of her hand which seems to become more orderly and visible by the hour.

“I have such a sweet granddaughter,” Zouken says, reaching out and patting the back of her nearest shoulder. Her silky hair slides against the skin of her neck. Sakura breathes through it. She doesn’t flinch. It wouldn’t do any good to note the sickly scent in the air or the way she can never tell affection from calculated manipulation. She sighs softly, relieved, when his hand drops away. “Come with me,” he says. He turns from her, expecting her to follow.

Instead of taking her to the familiar doorway leading down into the damp mausoleum beneath their feet, Zouken leads her toward a room in the back of the house. She knows that it is unlikely he ever sleeps, but for appearances’ sake, it might be called his bedroom. She doesn’t want to go there, and – thankfully – just before they pass through into the dimly lit room, he leads her to yet another door. He touches it, and the lock gives way.

The door frame itself is dusty, and as it creaks open, Sakura finds that what is held inside seems a bit anticlimactic. It is a closet. Long and just wide enough to walk between the shelves single file. She swallows hard as Zouken dawdles his way inside. She steps in after him, getting her bearings in the dim, closed space.

Abruptly, Zouken makes a thick, bubbling sound that might be a cough. If he were an ordinary human being at all, she might believe that the dust had made him splutter. As she breathes shallowly and sometimes through her teeth, she knows that it must all be an elaborate game of pretend, even if she doesn’t quite see what goes on behind his closed doors.

“I have a gift for you,” Zouken tells her. He reaches up to one of the shelves and hoists down a box, wrapped in a dirty old shroud. His wizened hand grasps the cloth and tugs it away. He lets go of it, unceremoniously allowing it to fall to the floor.

Sakura presses her lips into a tight line, watching the box rather than the ancient magus. She does not know what the “gift” might be and regards it as if it might be made of poison.

After a moment, Zouken lifts the lid and she looks inside the rectangular shape, lacing her fingers together in front of her to protect herself a little.

“My gift to you is to choose the catalyst that seems… _right_ to you,” he says with a sly, proud smile that makes his black eyes nearly disappear.

The box is lined in a rich purple, not quite black, untouched by time and damaging sunlight. There is a musty, old smell that is less unpleasant than the basement or even the air around Grandfather. It is more similar to the old books that Shinji had shown her proudly when they were little. Inside, several objects rest in crisscrossed array on the cushioned surface. They emanate history and blood – each of them of its own kind and depth.

Curious enough to allow her fear to subside a little, Sakura reaches out with delicately parted fingertips to the edge of the case.

She feels her grandfather’s presence retreat a little. He steps back, further into the dark space.

“Take your time,” he encourages her. She would wonder why, but a second later she wonders if he would even be there if she were to glance in the direction of his voice. Instead, she focuses on this choice that has been made hers, taking it as a gift even though she is so rarely offered any.

She traces her finger along as she examines the various catalysts in her grandfather’s collection. In the gloom, an old, yellowed cloth, lovingly folded stands out. It appears stained with droplets of blood and perhaps the tracks of tears. It looks ancient but as if it may have only been used for a short while before being kept away from use forever. Despite the fact that the stained, pale cloth catches her eye, Sakura feels herself decide against it. It feels remote and intimate, and for some reason, she resents it.

The case has enough blades in it to make reaching in carelessly treacherous. Some are daggers while others are short swords. None of them are particularly large or heavy. They are arranged so their blades do not touch or dull one another. There is even an old pistol that seems to rest against the cushion with a tired and spent countenance. Her gaze narrows as sour disappointment deepens within her as she tentatively rules out each one. She does not like any of them. Sakura has never wanted _a weapon_.

Eyes scanning to another corner of the case with some weary resignation, something catches her attention with a little bright sparkle in the dark. She frowns at it curiously. For a moment, she thinks of being a little girl, almost so small that she can hardly remember anything but images. Black hair – mother, father, sister, and her own reflection. Ribbons and green grass and gemstones she may look at but must never touch.

Suddenly defiant, her fingers reach out and brush over the circular object which appears to have broken hooks and tethers at certain angles as if it might have once been part of something greater. She furrows her brow a bit deeper and reaches out, at last, to pick something up. As she lifts it, she feels its weight and watches the rhinestones and pearls and metallic sheen rotate around the circular thing. She gets the impression that it must have once been part of a garment as she feels the way the broken bits rest softly over fingers and wrist. Her eyes widen a bit as she realizes the only piece of a garment it ever could have been as she examines it from another angle, seeing the way it is softly conical in shape, its central point surrounded by six large pearls.

She hears her grandfather’s voice. He chuckles.

“Has something finally caught Sakura’s eye?”

She does not look for the form to match the voice. She stares at the object that is half-breastplate and half-costume jewelry. She blinks a few times but cannot quite lessen the aperture of her eyes. She opens her mouth to try and answer her grandfather. She nearly shakes her head to say that it still isn’t right, but even as her face flushes just a little at both the awareness of what it is and the way it makes her feel, she realizes that – so far – it is the nearest to something she can bring herself to take as her grandfather’s collection has offered her.

“I—” she says softly. Only then does her look of scandal start to give way to a somewhat harder expression of bitterness. She glares at the object in her hand. Of course the only thing she can find in this entire gallery of ancient and beautiful objects is the costume of a whore. After all, in the end, it is the only armor her _grandfather_ has ever given her.

She feels hollow – so hollow for a moment that she cannot find the breath to speak. Her eyes search desperately to find a focal point, to avoid the wave of dizziness, nausea, and familiar revulsion that threatens to sweep over her.

Then she sees it.

She hears the rattling pieces of the fragment of an antique bustier as she sets it down next to the space it had once occupied. While the weapons are near one another without quite touching, she notices that this corner is less neatly arranged. In the spot that she had cleared, she sees… her own eyes.

She recognizes them but it takes a moment to fully make sense to her. She reaches out for the edges of the tarnished, greenish surface. She carefully extricates it from where it had lain in the case. It occurs to her that it seems as if it had been buried carelessly but, maybe, in a way to protect it, too. The frame is mostly intact, but there are a few cracks snaking out from the edge and back again, leaving the edges of the mirror imperfect and fragile. When she has it held carefully in both hands, Sakura touches it with her thumb as she looks at herself in the ancient mirror.

“This one,” she says after she has gazed into her own reflection for a moment. Her voice is calm, nearly devoid of any emotion. The only thing she can quite decide that she feels, as she sees herself reflected back from its depths, is solace. For a moment, it is as if her own reflection might keep her company in a way it never has before. She wonders at it silently.

She wonders if – in spite of what Servants are summoned to do – whatever will be called forth to see itself in this mirror might be kind.

 

⧞⧞⧞

 

After Sakura has chosen her catalyst, there is still a while before the opportune time of night to perform the ritual. However, it seems as if it is not too soon the descend into the basement of the Matou mansion. Sakura follows a couple of steps behind Zouken’s form, holding the mirror close to her chest, still with both hands. She keeps the reflective side held to her body as if it might somehow absorb any further reflection into its essence, breaking the strange connection she had felt with it moments before.

Her feet feel heavy, though. She has never learned to like going downstairs, no matter how much a fact of her existence it is. That’s why she is a little relieved when she hears him approaching, all indignation and arrogance in his step.

“What are you doing?” Shinji demands. He directs his question at her over Zouken’s shoulder, but Zouken steps into his line of sight and – as diminutive as the old magus is before him – he shrinks back just a little. She notices his hands ball into tight fists in spite of it.

“Sakura is about to begin to fulfil her purpose as the heir of Matou,” Zouken says. She can hear the bright pride in his tone, but it doesn’t bring her any enjoyment. She knows that it serves no other purpose than to hurt him. Than to drive a deeper wedge between them when she wishes there were something that could make them allies again, if nothing else.

“She is nothing to us, Grandfather,” Shinji pleads angrily. She wishes that it were even possible for Zouken to hear his argument with any genuine consideration. If anything about their world were fair, he would. “Teach me how, and I’ll bring our family back to power without _using her_ at all.”

Sakura narrows her eyes at Shinji a little without looking away from him. It isn’t quite a glare, but his words sting enough to make her own fingers tighten a bit around the mirror’s frame. She wonders if it might crumble, letting the glass cut her.

“There would be no time even if you had an ounce of value or power in those useless limbs of yours, boy,” Zouken admonishes him. His voice has that strange, unreadable quality to it. He is angry, but he sounds like he might almost have some human feeling in his tone that seems at odds with the detached callousness of what he is saying.

It is almost as if he cares whether Matou Shinji survives. Sakura feels the heaviness inside her of knowing that he doesn’t.

Shinji is pale with rage. There is an ugly expression on his handsome features, and it is the way Zouken and his father and even she have twisted him into something other than what he might have been for years. She feels responsible. She will feel responsible, too, when Shinji’s insolence gets him beaten, punished, or killed.

She does not shrink away from the venom in his gaze as he stares at her.

She knows she deserves it, and she’ll drink it in however she must.

She knows that he is rehearsing in his mind the reminders of what she is – that no matter what their grandfather says that she is beneath him in every way. She is _his_ – except in any way that might save either of them in this place. Then he turns away and stamps off to his bedroom, letting out an undignified squeal of anger. His humiliation before Zouken is complete yet again, and her fate is sealed in turn.

 

⧞⧞⧞

 

Sakura tries to push Shinji from her mind. She will have plenty of time now – every day, every afternoon, every night – to appease him. Her stomach turns and tightens. She takes a deep breath and lets it go, closing her eyes for a moment as they descend the stairs onto the nearly clear basement floor. If she disappoints Zouken, there will be a far worse price to pay.

Zouken walks confidently to the far side of the chamber. Sakura waits several paces behind him as she looks down at the space that she knows was used for the summoning ritual ten years earlier. She looks at it, eyes wide again as she tries to retrace her fallen uncle’s steps in her mind.

Zouken picks up his cane and points with it for a moment toward the mirror she still has clutched to her chest.

“You’ll put that over there,” he says, indicating the place he has deemed suitable for it.

Sakura moves quickly and quietly to obey him, aware of how close she is to the source of her terrible education. She takes a few quick steps backward from the low, unimpressive display – it could hardly be called an altar – the mirror rests upon. She looks at Zouken to see if she has missed something.

“Good,” he says. She relaxes her shoulders a little and backs away a bit more. “Now…” he says pleasantly. He gives her the instructions to paint the summoning circle on the floor patiently. She uses blood he provides for her to do it. The scent stings her nose. Of course the Matou would use blood for this. Of course she would need to use blood for this. She doesn’t ask questions.

When Zouken is satisfied with the outcome, Sakura finally takes a moment to look at the circle in its entirety. She thinks it is beautiful for a moment. She is nearly proud for a moment, but the awareness that the blood had likely come from strangers no one would ever miss dulls any satisfaction she might have shared.

“What are you looking so forlorn for?” Zouken asks her, approaching in a quick shuffle. He reaches up with an affectionate push to her chin. “You are a magus with rarely equaled potential. You are just too afraid to live up to anything you could be,” he says. The insult mingled with the compliment isn’t lost on her. “... And that could end today,” he says, dangling the prospect in front of her.

He steps back and nods to her. He looks up at something. For a moment, Sakura watches him without his watching her. She notices how hideous he is, how unlike a real human he looks, but it is a fleeting thought.

“It is time,” he announces when he looks at her. She looks down, the shame of being caught in such a cruel thought subduing her again.

“How do I—” she starts to ask without looking up.

“You know this, Sakura,” Zouken chides. “Or have you forgotten?”

The crackle of a threat rides beneath his tone then. There is nothing like dread to make Sakura’s heart beat quicker and her mind move faster.

She focuses her energy. She is silent. She breathes. She prepares to stop remembering how to breathe.

In the center of the summoning circle painted in blood, Sakura focuses on her own circulation.

She feels her blood, her breath, and the conscious sensation of being alive run through each sensate part of her. Her beating heart, her lungs as they expand and contract, her feet on the floor, her closed eyelids, the damp of her mouth going dry. She feels awareness and tingling energy along her spine. It runs down her legs, into the pit of her stomach, and down from there. Her skin flushes with heat. She marshals control of her mind, knowing that in just a second she will have to let it go.

Matou magecraft is foreign to _Tohsaka Sakura’s_ body.

She has not thought of herself by that name in many years. It seems to betray her right in this moment of greatest importance. No matter what Matou has done to her, at least it has not cast her aside, abandoned her, and _ignored_ her suffering.

Matou magecraft has been entwined with her body.

Wrapped around her heart, inserted into her spine, inside her in entrails and womb and mind, the Matou magecraft has become _hers_ . She has become… _its_.

As she gives herself over to it, knowing there is no choice for her but let go, her nerves become alive with an electric impulse. It is hard to stand, but then she is a statue. Her head arcs back, her chin lifting high as her body breathes with nothing more than the demanding order nestled in her brain stem. She cannot do anything voluntarily except _speak_ …

She is a conduit for the Matou magecraft. Nothing more. And so, in this way, she pleads their case before the Grail:

“ **For the elements, silver and iron…** ” she recites. Sakura seems to listen to herself from afar off. There is blood here – not metal, precious or crude. But it is what she promises, even if she lies…

“... **For the foundation, stone and the Archduke of Pacts** ,” she says – words Master Zolgen himself as fed to her since he had known of this use for her, “ **And as for the Ancestor, my great Master Zolgen…** ”

Standing in this chamber with her, clinging to life from this ritual’s beginning…

“... **Close the gates of the four directions** ,” she continues. She is trapped here in this place, and what she summons will be too. “ **Come forth from the Crown and follow the forked road leading to the Kingdom** …”

“ **Fill, fill, fill, fill, fill** ,” she says with even, deadened cadence. Every time, it feels as if something presses her stomach up toward her throat while the magical energy, dreadful and cursed as it might be, courses through her and gives her power she could never hope to hold as a mere human being – as someone like Shinji. “ **Repeat five times. But when each is filled, destroy it**.”

When her body is something else’s, when she can no longer feel anything but the mind-numbing energy she has been taught to endure, it is at last time to reach out to something – someone – beyond this world.

“ **Heed my words** ,” her voice demands. “ **My will creates your body, and your sword creates my destiny**.” She had passed up so many swords, but she knows that no matter what she wishes for, her Servant will be forced to and be willing to fight. It will be stronger than she has ever been. “ **If you heed the Grail's call and obey my will and reason, then answer me**!”

“ **I hereby swear that I shall be all the good in the world** ,” she promises – another lie. She knows that she has never been good. She does not know if she if she ever could have been, “ **that I shall defeat all evil in the world**.” Lies, lies, lies… “ **Thou Seventh Heaven, clad in the three great words of power, come forth from the ring of deterrence, Guardian of the Scales**!”

At last, the gathered energy dispels from her, and there is a great whirlwind before her that roars in her ears. Its cool, clear breath must come from somewhere other than this place, and its icy fingers seem to blow the feeling back into her body. She feels her muscles quiver, but she keeps standing, remembering how to blink her own eyes and trying to make sense of being able to see again.

She hears another laugh from Zouken. This one seems gleeful, but of course it is not without derision.

“Oh my…” he says. And she knows that there is a barb in it meant for her as well when he continues. “It is a good thing I did not select this one for your idiot, precious Kariya…” he says. “He would not have been able to cope.”

When Sakura looks upon the Servant the Grail has selected for her, the first thing she notices are the long, flowing strands of hair that blow softly in the dissipating wind. They are almost the same color as her own. Self-consciously, she reaches up and clutches at the bottom of the length of her own hair, fingers threading shyly through it.

She can feel the link between herself and this woman who is not a _creature_ because she is less than a person but because she is too terribly _more_ than one. The woman is tall and clad in black clothing that is enough to make her blush almost as much as the piece of a bustier had. She frowns, wondering if it’s somehow her fault.

Before she can think of one thing to say to stop or encourage such an action, the Servant kneels down before her, taking one knee. She bows her head, too, but Sakura can see her face still and realizes that the cover over her eyes ought to leave her blind. She does not move like a blind person, though.

“Master,” says the woman, “what are your orders?”

Still, Sakura’s words fail her. She knows that she has not failed to summon a Servant, and she can tell by the woman’s movements that she is strong and agile after seconds with her. Strong and agile or not, Sakura scowls a little at the fact that she immediately kneels before her when she could not be more unworthy. The first thing she does is reach out and place her hand over the woman’s bare shoulder, wondering what good it will do.

Nervously, Sakura looks over at Zouken. She knows that he will be amused even if she makes a mess of things now and that the wrath will come later. She tries to think as quickly as she can, and it occurs to her that this Servant cannot stay in this place any longer. She does not want her to.

“Please… get up,” she manages to say. “And we will… make plans for you,” she says, still haltingly. She hopes that this, at least, will appease Zouken enough to know that she has not decided to resist him now. She knows that she cannot do this on her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, I welcome feedback!


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